MR REE'S CHALLENGE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5634, 3 December 1889, Page 2

MR REE'S CHALLENGE.

Sik, — I was much surprised at seeing in your issue of Saturday evening last a letter signed " Anti-Humbug" containing statements referring to Mr Rees. When you refused to insert a letter from Mr Rees last (Saturday you said that you could not insert any letters having reference to matters which had not been stated on the public platform. The letter signed Anti-Humbug contained a number of allegations which have not been the subject of comment on the platform. If this be your idea of fair play in refusing a communication in which a man seeks to vindicate himself, and which is signed with his own name, and then inserting a letter in which someone who is afraid that he should be identified, makes statements unduly diverging from the truth, all I can say is that you must have your own peculiar detination of the term "fair play."— l am, Arc, Victor Grace Day.

[The letter written by Mr Rees was a challenge to certain electors to appear on a public platform with him and support their objections to him as a candidate. The whole tbing wa: an election trick to gain the sympathy of the unthinking. The writer of tlie communication could scarcely have expected that any respectable journal would publish such a document, no matter from which side it emanated. His proper course would have been to first address the parties against whomhe made complaint, askingfomn explanation, and if they thought worth whiln to reply, then Mr Rees wouid l>c justifiedd requesting that the correspondence be published. We have no doubt that the gentlemen who were referred to in the letter are quite prepared to take the full responsibility of any statements they may have made. Electors have every right to express their sentiments regarding a candidate without being challenged to mount a platform. If journals were to publish challenges of the kind there would be no end to documents of this nature at election times. " Anti-Hum-bug's" letter was inserted because it dealt with questions of public notoriety,— Ed. Herald.]